#parent | #kids | #teensexting | #sexting | Tim Paine opens up about Cricket Australia, marriage and scandals

The following year Paine’s unexpected rise reached its zenith when he was appointed Test captain after skipper Steve Smith and his deputy David Warner were banned following the sandpapergate scandal in South Africa.

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However, 2018 was also the year Ferguson made complaints about the behaviour of Paine and other Cricket Tasmania employees after leaving the organisation.

Ferguson was subsequently charged and pleaded not guilty to allegations that she fraudulently took $5600 from Cricket Australia in 2017. The case has been adjourned a number of times, most recently last month.

Ms Ferguson is suing her former employer over allegations she was sexually harassed by four former colleagues. The allegations have been denied.

Paine, 37, insists the exchange was consensual and was subsequently cleared by Cricket Australia and Cricket Tasmania investigations.

But he was forced to resign as captain by Cricket Australia when the scandal became public in November last year and subsequently stood down from the Australian and Tasmanian teams.

“I never thought I wasn’t putting my wife and family first, but when I took a step back it is ridiculous that I couldn’t see how selfish I was, how much in my own bubble I was,” Paine told Lalor.

“I remember Bonnie saying something to me years ago and I was thinking, ‘What is she talking about? I’m a good husband, I do everything’, but I see now I was hopeless. I wasn’t a horrible person, but everything I did was centred around me and what I needed to do. And now I probably am – no, I am – completely the opposite.

“I don’t know if I could play international cricket the way I am now, maybe I would be better, but I have always been the sort of person who thought they needed to be fully immersed, that’s the way I’ve done it. I didn’t know any other way.”

“Initially, I was just concerned with losing cricket, but that soon became the least of my concerns. It was shocking. I’d be ­sitting at home thinking of the memories we’d had in it, about the kids and everything Bonnie and I had created, and to think I’d messed that up was horrible.

“It was sickening and then it got to the point where I thought why bother even trying.”

The couple received professional help, which saved their marriage, and Paine has recently made a return to playing for Tasmania.

“I changed my thinking,” he says. “I shut up and just worked on becoming the person I wanted to be and should have been and slowly things turned around. Our relationship is much better now.”

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